


sink to the bottom with you

by NotAllThoseWhoWander, winchesters



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - School, Alternate Universe - Teachers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander, https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesters/pseuds/winchesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is an art teacher at a gritty Parisian high school. Enjolras swings into the scene as the fervent, idealistic Politics teacher. Grantaire thinks he's falling a little bit in love. Worse, he doesn't think he entirely minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sink to the bottom with you

**Author's Note:**

> My sister (winchesters) and I live in the United States, and unfortunately we know very little about the French school system (only what we've learned in French class, which is pretty scant). We've agreed to keep it relatively ambiguous about things we haven't got any idea about (although if any readers would like to share insider's knowledge that would be v cool). Apparently History of Art is a thing, same as it is over here.
> 
> We would both love any feedback about this fic! 
> 
> (Also, heads up because this one's gonna be pretty smutty. In the future. Promise)

 

His alarm goes off at five-thirty, shrieking like a tea kettle, but Grantaire tugs his pillow over his face and moans into the bedclothes. It’s a sin, he thinks, waking up at the devil’s asscrack of dawn; beyond his flat’s windows, Paris is stirring, stretching itself out. He thinks that he can hear the city’s bones sifting and creaking, but chalks it up to the pounding in his head.

 

It’s been a hell of a night.

 

Following a three-year-running tradition, Grantaire had spent the previous evening getting fantastically shitfaced in a dive bar in the 19th arrondissement. He sort of vaguely recalls flashing neon and bad dance music, and being pulled around on a sticky floor by a series of young men and women whose faces blur very beautifully together (it’s always better when you can’t remember their hair color, or how their eyes looked). Time has taught him that the next morning is always a bitch. At least he hasn’t pulled a rerun of last year, when he’d woken up in an unfamiliar bed next to a long-haired guy with about a million shitty band tattoos.

 

“Fuck,” Grantaire grits out, and hauls himself out of bed. He feels ragged and dizzy, and his temples are fucking throbbing. His flat is a hellish mess, the floor cluttered with unused canvases, coffee cans full of paintbrushes, the stiff and lingering smell of turpentine. He sifts through his closet, pulls out a t-shirt and jeans (dressing spiffily for the first day seems pretty pointless) and sniffs somewhat gingerly at the material; clean. Then it’s getting dressed, throwing his supplies into a satchel, downing a handful of aspirin on the way out the door.

 

The train ride into the 20th arrondissement is blessedly brief (and really, Grantaire could have walked but his head’s aching and his eyes still kind of hurt) and he dodges into a public bathroom above the station to check his reflection. It’s probably time for a haircut, because frankly he’s looking a little shaggy, but he splashes frigid water on his face and looks somewhat perkier. The other teachers have grown accustomed to his ragged appearance and God knows the students couldn’t care less. Grantaire climbs the lycée’s front steps at six-thirty, just after sunrise, feeling mildly alright and not entirely shitty.

 

____

  
  


There’s a commotion already in the staff room: a little band of teachers sifting through new teaching materials, lists and packets sent out by the principal. Grantaire finds Combeferre at the formica table, skimming a list of his new class. He’s shaking his head at something and uncapping a highlighter when Grantaire slaps his shoulder.

 

“Top of the morning, huh?”

 

Combeferre looks up, slaps Grantaire’s hand into an amiable handshake. He pulls his glasses off and rubs at his eyelids. “How is it only six thirty-five? It feels like midday.”

“No kidding. I feel like someone’s hammering my skull from the inside.” Grantaire pulls out a chair and straddles it backwards. “Who’ve you got?”

 

Combeferre drags both hands through his hair (which, Grantaire has noted, looks a little shaggy but in a really good way, like he’s trying to grow it out) and they peer at the list together.

 

“Dupont, Dupont, Toure, Albaf—he’s really clever,” Grantaire says, “had him for History of Art last year, top marks in everything but you’ve got to push him. This one here, she’s a real troublemaker.” He watches Combeferre highlight the name. Around them, other teachers are falling into a similar pattern—conferring with one another, glancing through lists and placing bets on who will be the most unruly, identifying the kids who’ve been poor performers in the past. The same names come up again and again.

 

“I’ve got Julie Blanc again,” Combeferre mutters, and grinds the highlighter across the girl’s name. “She threatened to punch me out last year, in front of the entire class. Said she’d hit me right in the face.”

 

Combeferre, who is twenty-six years old and good looking, generally has little issue with his Literature students. They’re mostly apathetic, a handful of dangerously rude or loud or violent but Combeferre’s got a soothing voice and the gentle sort of bearing you don’t want to be cruel to. Or won’t risk being cruel to, because there’s a quiet assertiveness there that most kids don’t want to fuck around with.

 

The staff room chatter rises and swells up around them like a buffer. The throbbing in Grantaire’s temples has eased off, and Combeferre has the good grace not to ask where he spent the night, or how drunk he’d been, or how he’d managed to haul himself upright this morning. Grantaire’s thankful for that, and thankful for the companionable silence in which he and Combeferre go through the rest of the list.

 

“All the usual suspects,” Combeferre says when they’ve reached the bottom (Clarice Zaire). “How about you?”

 

“I’ll check,” Grantaire says, and stands to go check his mail slot. And then he freezes up and his throat sticks and his heart drops, because a singularly attractive young man has just shouldered his way through the door, unzipping a sweatshirt and holding a sheaf of papers under his arm.

 

“Salut,” he says, to someone, Grantaire can’t see who and he thinks it might be Monsieur Dupont but that doesn’t matter because all he can think it: holy fuck. His hands still on the packet of files, student’s names and reputations momentarily forgotten.

 

While Grantaire’s primary thought had been holy fuck, his secondary was holy fuck, he’s young. Because despite the fact that there’s a handful of teachers under the age of thirty (and, okay, Grantaire is barely scraping twenty-three himself), this guy looks about twenty, twenty-one. And fucking—angelic, Grantaire thinks dizzily, but that’s not enough, that doesn’t do justice to the high cheekbones and small earnest smile and red curve of lips.

 

“Hey, salut,” Combeferre says brightly, and the guy waves and takes the papers from under his arm and heads over to make conversation. Grantaire watches and his heart seems to be kind of seizing up, and he thinks it’s probably the hangover but everything’s also a little fuzzy around the edges.

 

He crams the papers back into his mail slot, only dimly aware that he’s neglecting his class list. Eases past Madame Chabert, who is gesticulating far too wildly for this hour. He folds his arms up against his chest, because it feels good to touch his own ribs and skin, feel his heartbeat under his forearm. Reassuring, somehow.

 

“And who’s this kid?”

 

Combeferre smiles genially, drinking from a coffee mug. “This is—”

 

“Enjolras,” the young man says, and offers a hand. “Combeferre and I go way back.”

 

“That so?” Grantaire can’t help but arch an eyebrow, perhaps poorly disguising his urge to gawk. Enjolras’s eyes are very deeply blue. The kind you could drown in, he thinks without meaning to.

 

“I’m afraid so.” Combeferre gathers his papers. “We taught together at Lycée Charles de Gaulle.”

 

“Feels like forever ago, right?” Enjolras smiles thinly when Combeferre mutters no kidding. “I didn’t catch your name.” Though he addresses Grantaire, he seems to stare right through him. Grantaire folds his arms again.

 

“Grantaire.”

 

“What do you teach?”

 

“Art, and History of.” He feels a sharp prick of indignation when Enjolras nods distractedly and turns away, sorting through his papers. Okay, hardly an uncommon reaction (because art teachers are dispensable and History of Art is a relatively new subject area for the school system) but Grantaire finds himself fighting the desperate and sickening desire for Enjolras to look at me, dammit. There’s something undeniably alluring about Enjolras; maybe the way he carries himself, or the confidence in his speech that borders on arrogance.

 

“Hey,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras glances up from his papers. “You know much about the students here?”

 

“This isn’t my first time at the circus,” Enjolras says, and he says it lightly but there’s a low reverberation in the back of his throat. He smiles and runs his tongue along his top teeth, and Grantaire’s stomach lurches.

 

“Yeah, well,” Grantaire says, and as if following some blessedly cosmic cue the bell shrills. “Good luck, right?”

 

“D’accord,” Enjolras stacks his papers and slides them, tidy, into his satchel. “Nice meeting you.”

 

Grantaire watches Enjolras weave his way through the huddle of teachers around the mail slots. He tries to swallow away whatever he’s feeling, because it’s very distracting and more than a little irking, but his throat feels sticky and hot and tight.

 

“Nice meeting you, too,” he says to Enjolras’s retreating back.

 


End file.
